Gowtham R. Kurri

About Me

I am an Assistant Professor at International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT Hyderabad), associated with the Signal Processing and Communications Research Center (SPCRC).  

Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Arizona State University, USA, hosted by Dr. Oliver Kosut  and Dr. Lalitha Sankar.  I received my M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the School of Technology and Computer Science  at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), India, under the guidance of Dr. Pranab Sen  and Dr. Vinod M. Prabhakaran, respectively, in 2020. I graduated from IIIT Hyderabad, India, with a B.Tech. in Electronics and Communication Engineering in 2011.

From 2011 to 2012, I was an Associate Engineer with Qualcomm India Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad. From July to October 2019, I was a Research Intern with the Blockchain Technology Group at IBM Research, Bengaluru, India.

Research Interests 

My research interests are in the areas of Statistical Machine Learning, Information-Theoretic Security and Privacy, Secure Multi-Party Computation, and Network Information Theory. 

Selected Awards

• TPC choice session at ISIT 2018 (top 6%)

• Travel Fellowship from the Sarojini Damodaran Foundation to attend ISIT 2018, Vail, Colorado, USA

• Appeared in Dean's List for Academic Excellence for Spring and Monsoon semesters, 2009, and Spring semester, 2011, at IIIT Hyderabad

Publications

Preprints

1. An Operational Approach to Information Leakage via Generalized Gain Functions (arXiv)

• Authors: Gowtham R. Kurri, Lalitha Sankar, Oliver Kosut

2. Towards Addressing GAN Training Instabilities: Dual-objective GANs with Tunable Parameters (arXiv)

• Authors: Monica Welfert, Kyle Otstot, Gowtham R. Kurri, Lalitha Sankar 

Peer-Reviewed Conference Papers

1. An Alphabet of Leakage Measures (IEEEXplore | arXiv)

   • Authors: Atefeh Gilani, Gowtham R. Kurri, Oliver Kosut, Lalitha Sankar

   • IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW), 2022. 

2. A Variational Formula for Infinity-Renyi Divergence with Applications to Information Leakage (IEEEXplore | arXiv)

   • Authors: Gowtham R. Kurri, Oliver Kosut, Lalitha Sankar

   • IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2022

3. alpha-GAN: Convergence and Estimation Guarantees (IEEEXplore | arXiv)

   • Authors: Gowtham R. Kurri, Monica Welfert, Tyler Sypherd, Lalitha Sankar 

   • IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2022

4. Realizing GANs via a Tunable Loss Function (IEEEXplore | arXiv)

   • Authors: Gowtham R. Kurri, Tyler Sypherd, Lalitha Sankar

   • IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW), 2021

   • International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) Workshop on Information-Theoretic Methods for Rigorous, Responsible, and Reliable Machine Learning, 2021 (link)

5. Evaluating Multiple Guesses by an Adversary via a Tunable Loss Function (IEEEXplore | arXiv)

   • Authors:  Gowtham R. Kurri, Oliver Kosut, Lalitha Sankar

   • IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2021 

6. Multiple Access Channel Simulation (IEEEXplore | arXiv)

   • Authors: Gowtham R. Kurri, Viswanathan Ramachandran, Sibi Raj B. Pillai, Vinod M. Prabhakaran

   • IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2021

7. Optimal Communication rates and Combinatorial Properties for Common Randomness Generation (To appear. Extended version at arXiv)

   • Authors: Yanjun Han, Kedar Tatwawadi, Gowtham R. Kurri, Zhengqing Zhou, Vinod M. Prabhakaran, Tsachy Weissman

   • IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2021

8. Secure Computation to Hide Functions of Inputs (IEEEXplore | Extended version at arXiv)

   • Authors: Gowtham R. Kurri, Vinod M. Prabhakaran

   • IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2020

9. Coordination via Shared Randomness (IEEEXplore)

   • Authors: Gowtham R. Kurri, Vinod M. Prabhakaran

   • IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW), 2019

10. The Role of Interaction and Common Randomness in Two-User Secure Computation (IEEEXplore)

    • Authors: Gowtham R. Kurri, Jithin Ravi, Vinod M. Prabhakaran

    • IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2018

11. Coordination Using Individually shared Randomness (IEEEXplore | Extended version at arXiv)

    • Authors: Gowtham R. Kurri, Vinod M. Prabhakaran, Anand Sarwate

    • IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2018

    • Selected for presentation in TPC choice session (6% of all the accepted papers were selected for this).

Journal Papers

1. Multiple Access Channel Simulation (IEEEXplore | arXiv )

   • Gowtham R. Kurri, Viswanathan Ramachandran, Sibi Raj B. Pillai, Vinod M. Prabhakaran

   • IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 2022

2. Optimal Communication rates and Combinatorial Properties for Common Randomness Generation (IEEEXplore | arXiv)

   • Authors: Yanjun Han, Kedar Tatwawadi, Gowtham R. Kurri, Zhengqing Zhou, Vinod M. Prabhakaran, Tsachy Weissman

   • IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 67, no. 12, pp. 7723-7739, Oct. 2021

3. Coordination Through Shared Randomness (IEEEXplore | arXiv )

   • Authors: Gowtham R. Kurri, Vinod M. Prabhakaran, Anand Sarwate

   • IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 67, no. 8,  pp. 4948-4974, Aug. 2021

4. Interactive Secure Function Computation (IEEEXplore | arXiv)

   • Authors: Deepesh Data*, Gowtham R. Kurri*, Jithin Ravi, Vinod M. Prabhakaran

   • *Equal contribution

   • IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 66, no. 9,  pp. 5492-5521, Sept. 2020

Professional Activities

• Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

• Reviewer for ISIT 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022; ITW 2019, 2021; NCC 2019;  AAAI 2020; ICML Workshop on ITR3, 2021.

• Member of the Student Organization Committee for International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), 2010, held in Hyderabad.